New Process

I had rather a different approach to my piece yesterday, in that it kind of wasn't a piece. The zero-drafting I did yesterday morning went really well; I found myself exploring interesting places. However, when I initially sat down to write, I had the idea that I'd find my way rather quickly toward a finished piece on the topics I was exploring. Instead, things turned out to be quite a bit more complicated than I initially expected. This is not an unusual occurrence. Something that seems relatively straightforward in my initial thinking turns out to be far less so when the zero drafting starts. This is exactly what I want from a zero draft. I follow the zero draft where it wants to lead, and I learn a lot.

The problem is that at the end of that process, I feel like I've done great work, and yet I'm still no closer to finished piece for the day's publishing than I was when I started.

So it hit me that I should start making more space for exactly that kind of thing to happen. Rather than beat myself over my head, I thought maybe it would be useful to do what I did yesterday, namely to step back and take a kind of bird's eye view on the work I'd done that day.

It definitely felt useful. On the other hand, it wasn't lost on me that what I was doing there, irrespective of all my claims to the contrary, was pretty much one-hundred percent straight blogging about my work.

Maybe it's time to put my protests down and evolve my process.

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